To his chance. To the field on a Saturday. To catching a pass for Western Michigan University’s football team when it really matters.

Three years of patience and persistence, sometimes seemingly a dozen rungs down the ladder on the depth chart. Two weeks to go to until the Big House.

“You kind of wait your whole life for this moment, to be out there playing,” Monette said Friday, two weeks into fall practices and two weeks before WMU’s Sept. 3 opener at Michigan.

The lanky walk-on from Portage Central High School has turned himself into one of the Broncos’ top four wideouts.

Monette, a 6-foot-6, 203-pound redshirt-junior, is behind only seniors Jordan White, Chleb Ravenell and Robert Arnheim on the depth chart, and is ahead of junior Ansel Ponder and four touted true freshmen — all of whom are on scholarship.

“I kind of got the feeling in the spring, playing a lot,” Monette said of having a legitimate opportunity to play this fall. “But it’s a whole different story once you get to August. It’s a lot more urgent when it comes around this time. You’re about to play in a few weeks.”Monette has played in two games in his time at WMU — twice seeing mop-up duty, but no catches, in 2009.

Now, he’s with the first-team offense in four-receiver sets.

“He’s in the four,” Broncos coach Bill Cubit said, confirming Monette’s standing on the depth chart. “He’s been playing well. The biggest thing I’ve seen is he always tried to cradle the ball on the catch. Now he’s got his hands out there. He’s a big, tall target that’s running good routes. He’s looked as good in the last five days as he has the whole time I’ve been here.“He’ll be on the field and he’s going to play and it’s probably a pretty big dream for him. I think it’s a real credit to him and his work ethic.”

A year ago, Monette wasn’t among WMU’s top eight wideouts. By last spring, he was No. 4.

Yet, that was putting him ahead of the oft-injured Ravenell and bevy of incoming freshman wideouts, all of whom had scholarship offers at one time from BCS programs.

Ravenell’s strong camp has secured his place as WMU’s second target, after White. But Monette has outplayed Ponder — one of the fastest couple players on the roster — and the freshmen, whose heads still look like cars on a Tilt-a-Whirl.

“He’s not dumb. He’s going to go out there and look at who we signed and, ‘I better get my act together,’” Cubit said of Monette. “And he did. This spring he was OK. He had a little better spring than he had last year. But this fall is really different. It’s different. And I really hope he can keep it up, but he’s such a great kid and he works hard at it.”

Monette often says he’s still perceived as a walk-on in his hometown, with folks in Portage politely asking if he’s “sticking with it?”

A nationally televised debut against Michigan perhaps will put an end to that.

“He’s really taken the walk-on label off his back,” said first-year WMU receivers coach Josh Gattis. “When you line up out here, we tell them honestly in our (meeting) room, I don’t care what you are, I don’t care if you’re a scholarship guy or a walk-on guy, you’re going to have the same amount of opportunities. And he’s a guy who’s taken advantage of those opportunities.

“You’ve got a guy that’s taken from being a walk-on to being a guy that can contribute as a starter. He can go out there and I can feel 100-percent confident if I had to start him tomorrow that he’s going to go out there and make plays. He’s a guy who’s never asked why, why he doesn’t have a scholarship or anything? He just goes out and plays.”

So far only in practice. His roommate knows how badly Monette wants that to change.

“I’ve been living with Eric for about a year-and-a-half and spent every day with him,” WMU junior quarterback Alex Carder said. “I’ve seen his work ethic. I’ve seen how bad he’s been itching to get out there and actually get on the field and show what he can do. And he really has improved. There were some things that were questionable about him in the past that really aren’t anymore. He’s really turned into a really reliable receiver for us.”